Basketball: Top B.C. college prospects (men's version)

After publishing Part 2 of this college-to-CIS projection series, I received a very helpful e-mail from Cary Mellon, the SID at UBC Okanagan, which included player and team stats for every men's team in the British Columbia Colleges Athletic Association. (The stats aren't publicly available, for whatever reason.)

So I ran the numbers, and below are the top 5 prospects as identified by the same system used in previous posts (see Part 1 for a more complete explanation of the methodology and statistics used).

Again please note that these prospect lists are based on boxscores and on the history of CCAA-to-CIS conversions. This is not a substitute for scouting insight.

**

Francis Rowe
5-9 guard, 4th year, UNBC

Season

Conf

Year

Minutes

Per Game

Per 40

Percentages

PTS

REB

AST

BLK

STL

PTS

REB

eFG%

USG%

2010-11

BCCAA

3rd

377

11.8

1.0

2.4

0.1

1.8

22.6

1.9

56.1%

11.8%

2011-12

CIS

4th

305

8.2

0.7

1.7

0.1

1.7

19.4

1.6

54.4%

10.2%

Projected PER: 16.9, 118th in CIS.

118th sounds like a big number, but in a 43-team league, it's within the top 3 per team. Though, granted, we don't appear to have the same standouts here that we did with the women's players from the Alberta and Atlantic leagues.

But back to Rowe. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say nobody has ever confused him for a big man. 5-9 in basketball height, and 18 rebounds in 18 games last year means he's not in the paint much. He's here because that shooting percentage looks good — higher than Tyler Fidler and Rejean Chabot last year, for example. (Not that he's a better player than either of them but you get the idea.)

Including Rowe here may very well be irrelevant, since he appears to be playing 2011-12 with UNBC, where he will likely improve on his 2010-11 PER of 22.5. (But I had already written the above when I learned that, so I'm leaving him in.)

**

Ameet Kaila
6-7 forward, 3rd year, Douglas College

Season

Conf

Year

Minutes

Per Game

Per 40

Percentages

PTS

REB

AST

BLK

STL

PTS

REB

eFG%

USG%

2010-11

BCCAA

2nd

532

15.9

8.6

2.0

1.1

2.4

21.6

11.6

50.0%

17.6%

2011-12

CIS

3rd

431

10.7

5.4

1.3

0.7

2.2

17.8

9.0

47.1%

15.3%

Projected PER: 15.6, 141st in CIS.

On the surface, Kaila's stats look better than Rowe's, and he has an extra year left on top of that. So why is his PER lower? For one, Rowe's usage rate was quite low — which brings down his per-game numbers. And Rowe played 21 minutes per game to Kaila's 30. Both of these may of course imply that Kaila is the better player, but in terms of a straight per-minute projection like PER, Rowe's ahead by a bit.

Most worringly, Kaila has a projected eFG% of just 47.1%, below the CIS average. Having said that, there's always going to be room for a 6-7 post, so long as he can play. Like most of the players on this list, Ameet Kaila's statistical profile has some positives and some not-so-positives, but also like most of these players, he can certainly fill a role somewhere in CIS. Friend of the blog Wayne Thomasnoted over at Dinos Hoops News that Kaila was at Calgary's ID Camp in the spring, so that's a good sign.

It's also worth pointing out that Kaila had the 6th-best PER last year in the BCCAA, at 23.9, and is the highest among players on this list. (Rowe's 22.5 put him 9th, and the three players following were also in the top 15.) So he's a good player. Like I said earlier, let's not overcomplicate things.

**

Aneetan Braich
6-4 guard, 4th year, Douglas College

Season

Conf

Year

Minutes

Per Game

Per 40

Percentages

PTS

REB

AST

BLK

STL

PTS

REB

eFG%

USG%

2010-11

BCCAA

3rd

418

17.5

7.5

3.5

0.5

2.0

21.9

9.4

46.5%

13.8%

2011-12

CIS

4th

339

11.6

4.7

2.4

0.3

1.8

17.9

7.3

44.1%

12.0%

Projected PER: 14.9, 152nd in CIS.

Unlike the earlier posts, I'm including players here with a projected PER below the CIS average, just for the sake of having some players to talk about (and because the top six are all out of eligibility, practically speaking).

In the case of Mr. Braich, we have a 23.2 college PER translating to a 14.9 in the university game -- still good, of course, because one can be valuable even without being league-average.

A fun side note: Brent Malish, later (and now formerly) of the UBC Thunderbirds, called Braich "one of the more explosive scorers in the province" back in the 2005-06 high school year.

**

Blake Mansbridge
6-2 guard, 4th year, Camosun College

Season

Conf

Year

Minutes

Per Game

Per 40

Percentages

PTS

REB

AST

BLK

STL

PTS

REB

eFG%

USG%

2010-11

BCCAA

3rd

444

16.8

2.8

1.1

0.0

0.9

25.7

4.2

49.8%

17.7%

2011-12

CIS

4th

360

11.3

1.7

0.7

0.0

0.9

21.4

3.2

47.8%

15.4%

Projected PER: 14.3, 158th in CIS.

Mansbridge is a curious case because according to the stats, he only started one game last year, yet played 444 minutes. 26 MPG off the bench? (And an Academic All-Canadian?) Not bad.

He profiles as a shooter, and only a shooter — like Rowe, his inside game seems to be ... well, it doesn't seem to be a focus of his, let's say. He's also five basketball inches taller than Rowe, which may make up for the differences in their projected performance.

Mansbridge was also the best-projected player on Camosun last year, yet he still exhibits how difficult it was to find standouts in the BCCAA who weren't going into their fourth or fifth year. Of the five I've listed here, only two have three years or more left to play, and of those two, only Kaila is "still" a CCAA player (you'll see what I mean when you read the next player's section).

**

Micah Cockrill
6-5 wing, 2nd year, UBC Okanagan

Season

Conf

Year

Minutes

Per Game

Per 40

Percentages

PTS

REB

AST

BLK

STL

PTS

REB

eFG%

USG%

2010-11

BCCAA

1st

439

13.9

4.5

1.5

0.3

1.1

21.6

6.9

48.1%

15.5%

2011-12

CIS

2nd

356

9.6

2.8

1.1

0.2

1.0

18.4

5.4

45.7%

13.5%

Projected PER: 12.4, 194th in CIS.

Yes, that's a first-year player making the list. Even though UBC-O will make the jump next year, Cockrill won't, as he's transferring to TWU and must sit a year, according to his brother Jeremy. (By the way, a very rough projection of mine has the Heat as a 5-17 team next year, but that assumes a balanced Canada West schedule.)

Cockrill's stats are less impressive than the four players who precede him in this post, but we can allow some leeway for a rookie (especially one who was brought to the U of C ID camp in 2010, according to Wayne Thomas' March 23, 2010 update). He's not just listed here on potential, though: of the BCCAA players last year, he was 14th in PER. And his projected PER of 12.4 is 12th among the BC college players, regardless of age. (Here's a short profile on him.)

However. 194th is not that high for a projected PER, and Cockrill's college stats are actually similar to Mansbridge's projected university stats. We'll soon see just how well Cockrill adapts to Canada West.